That is virile work, is it not? And the result? During the past eight years the number of pupils in the Newton schools who are over fourteen has increased three times as fast as the number of pupils who are under fourteen. The school authorities have searched the highways and byways of the educational world until one-quarter of the school children of Newton are in the high schools.
V Joining Hands with the Elementary Schools
The same result which is attained informally at Newton is accomplished more formally by the organization of the junior high schools which have sprung up in Berkeley and Los Angeles, California; Evansville, Indiana; Dayton, Ohio, and a number of other progressive educational centers. The child’s school life under this plan is divided into three parts—the elementary grades (years one to six), the junior high school (years seven to nine) and the high school proper (years ten to twelve). The break, if break there must be, between the elementary and the high school, thus comes at age twelve and at age fifteen, instead of, as formerly, coming at age fourteen, when the temptation to leave school is so strong. Then, too, the sharp transition from work by grades to work by departments is made easier because the junior high school combines the two, leading the pupil gradually over from the grade method to the department method.
Though the junior high school has so great a popularity, its work is eclipsed by the still more revolutionary program of those educators who advocate the complete abolition of any line between the elementary and the high school, and the establishment of a public school of twelve school years. This plan, coupled with promotion by subjects rather than by grades, replaces the machine method of promotion and the gap between elementary and high schools by an easy, natural progression adaptable to the needs of any student, from the end of the kindergarten to the beginning of the university.
Superintendent Wirt of Gary, Indiana, has established such a twelve-year course in the Emerson School. The grades, numbered from one to twelve, are so arranged that a girl may take half of her subjects in school year eight (last grammar grade) and the other half in school year nine (first high school grade). In order to make the harmony more complete, Mr. Wirt places the elementary rooms, containing the second grade pupils, next door to the rooms which shelter high school seniors. On this side of the hall is a kindergarten; directly across from it is a class in high school geometry.
The same plan, on a larger scale, has been adopted by I. B. Gilbert, principal of the Union High School, Grand Rapids, Michigan, which houses twelve hundred students.
“We have obliterated the sharp line of distinction between the grades,” declared Mr. Gilbert. “The school, which is a new one, has a very complete equipment—physical, chemical, and biological laboratories, two cooking rooms, dressmaking and millinery rooms, an art department, a woodworking shop, a forge room and a machine shop; the print shop, though not yet installed, is to be put in this year. By bringing children of all grades to the school, we place at the disposal of grade pupils apparatus ordinarily reserved for high school pupils only. At the same time, our equipment is in constant use and the cost of establishing a separate industrial department or school for the grades is eliminated.
“These are merely the surface advantages, however. The real gain to the students is in other and most significant directions. First, the abolishing of rigid grading allows each child to follow his own bent. At the beginning of the adolescent period, when the old interests begin to lag, some new ideas must be furnished if the child is to be kept in school. We provide that new stimulus by beginning departmental work with the seventh year (at twelve or thirteen). Then, if the child shows any particular preference for any line of work, he may pursue it. From the seventh grade up, promotion is by subjects entirely, and not by grades. If a student elects art, she may follow up her art work for the next six years; similarly, a boy may follow shop-work, or a girl domestic science or millinery. In order to fit the school more quickly to the pupils’ need, we make a division at the beginning of the eighth grade of those pupils desiring to take academic work and those desiring to take industrial work in the high school. The latter group does extra sewing or shop-work twice each week.
“Again, we take all over-age and over-size pupils from the schools in this section of the city, and by placing them in ungraded classes, permit them to take the work which they can do. Here is a boy who cannot master grammar. That is no reason why he should not design jewelry, so we give him fourth year language, and take him into the tenth year class in jewelry design. Yes, and he makes good, doing excellent craft work and gradually pulling up in his language. By this means we make our twelve grade school fit the needs of any and every pupil who may come to it.
“We have a natural educational progress for twelve years,” concluded Mr. Gilbert. “There is no break anywhere. Instead of making it hard to step from grade eight to grade nine, we interrelate them so intimately that the student scarcely feels the change from one to the other. The result? Last June there were 152 pupils in our eighth grade. Of that number 118, or more than three-quarters of them reported in the ninth grade this fall. We have cancelled the invitation to quit school at the end of the eighth grade and our children stay with us.”